Good Systems has announced the recipients of its internal funding competition, awarding seed funding to interdisciplinary faculty teams whose projects explore how artificial intelligence can be designed in ways that better reflect human values and societal needs.

Planet Texas 2050 cross-team postdoctoral fellow Khristián Méndez Aguirre uses theater to connect hard science with the human experience of climate change.

Last year, Good Systems launched cross-cutting themes to connect its six core research projects and explore questions that span technical, ethical and social domains. One of the scholars continuing that work is postdoctoral fellow Jared Jensen, whose Knowledge, Generative AI and Power theme focuses on two interweaving concepts: how interdisciplinary teams pursue “ethical AI,” and how generative technologies are transforming creative labor and power dynamics.

A team of WCWH researchers has developed a faster, more sensitive method to analyze human hair for traces of everyday chemical exposures. By heating small hair samples and using a “sniffer” mass spectrometer to detect thousands of compounds in real time, the researchers can reveal months of a person’s exposure history — offering new possibilities for studying health and environmental risks.

Last year, UT Austin's Good Systems initiative introduced cross-cutting themes to link its six core research projects and explore questions that span multiple fields. This year, one of the researchers who launched that effort will continue his work: computer scientist Brad Knox focuses on ensuring AI systems act in ways that reflect human values, a problem known as AI alignment.

The AI+Human Objectives Initiative (AHOI) at The University of Texas at Austin has received an award from the grantmaking organization Coefficient Giving. The grant will fund AHOI’s work in the emerging field of AI alignment, which seeks to ensure that AI development is aligned with the goals and values of humanity.

In March 2025, Austin Police allegedly found more than 365,000 images of child sexual abuse material on the devices of Carl Innmon, then a fifth grade teacher at Baranoff Elementary in the Austin Independent School District.

On opposite sides of the country two teenagers made the same tragic decision to end their lives just months apart. They did not know each other, but they both engaged with AI chatbots from Character.AI prior to their deaths.

As rising temperatures puts pressure on living things in Texas, fossil records offer lessons on how salamanders have fared with similar changes in the past, according to a new study published in the journal Quaternary Research and supported by UT Austin’s Planet Texas 2050.

A group of UT researchers is using AI modeling to create user-friendly tools that track storm surges and chart their effects on the spread of infectious diseases in the Rio Grande Valley.